More particularly, the invention finds application in the art field concerned with the manufacture of containers such as bottles and cartons and the like, having a structure fashioned from multilayer or coated paper material and utilized for packaging liquid foods or edible products in general, typically milk, fruit juices, yoghurt, mineral water and other such substances.
It is common practice for containers of the type in question to be manufactured on a system consisting in a number of separate machines by which a selected forming material can be fashioned into a succession of single containers or bottles ready for filling.
The forming material is processed generally by machines that need to be equipped with respective storage units, so that the material emerging from a given machine can be held temporarily before being transferred to the machine on which the next step of the manufacturing process will be performed.
The need to provide a succession of storage units is dictated by the appreciable distance that separates the various machines utilized in the container manufacturing process, and heightened by the different rates at which the forming material advances when transferred from one machine to another. Indeed the strategy adopted in order to be certain that each machine will receive a steady supply of material is to ensure that the relative storage units, positioned normally upstream and downstream of the machines, are maintained as a rule at full capacity in order to avoid repeated stoppages that would otherwise be caused by a lack of material on the infeed side.
It will be appreciated also that the manoeuvres involved in transferring the forming material from one machine to another are performed typically by one or more operators, whose main task is precisely that of minding the storage units.
Notwithstanding the merits of the container manufacturing process outlined above, which affords considerable output potential, there are certain drawbacks attached, principally regarding the overall dimensions and the cost of the manufacturing system, also the speed with which the containers are turned out and the continuity of the process generally.
More exactly, the presence of a succession of machines separated one from another with relative storage units located between one machine and the next dictates that a large area is needed solely in order to accommodate the system and its minimum operating space, that is to say the space needed to ensure optimum movement of the parts associated with each machine and the material transferred from one machine to the next, and the space in which the operators employed to oversee the running of the process can carry out their various tasks.
Naturally, the system described above is typified by notably high commissioning and operating costs, in view both of the continuous maintenance requirements generated by a plurality of separate machines, and of the space needed to accommodate them.
Another consideration is that, by its very logistical nature, the manufacturing system outlined above does not allow operation at particularly high tempos, being subject to frequent pauses attributable to the switches between machines in operation on the one hand, in which the forming material is processed while advancing through the machine, and storage units on the other, in which the material is simply deposited for a given duration in readiness for its transfer to another machine.
The slowing down and frequent interruptions of the manufacturing process do nothing to help reduce the already high overheads, with the result that the end product is penalized by high marketing costs, and these same costs are driven up further by the need to employ operators exclusively for the purpose of transferring the forming material from one machine to another, a task that tends over time to become quite tedious.
The principal object of the present invention is to overcome the drawbacks typical of the prior art, by providing a system for the manufacture of containers, in particular containers for preserving foods, such as will incorporate all of the work stations needed to produce the selfsame containers, guaranteeing compact dimensions overall, achieving a reduction in the costs of producing and the costs of marketing the containers, while continuing to ensure optimum quality of the end product.
Another object of the invention is to speed up the processes by which the container is manufactured, and ensure their continuity.
A further object of the present invention is to automate the manufacturing process and thus relieve operators of tedious tasks like transferring the forming material from one machine to another, so that their activity can be confined to the conventional procedures of controlling, running and/or servicing the system.